Ubuntu and Knoppix can say they use Debian sources ... SLAX can say it uses Slackware sources. Those guys have trademarks too.

Debian and Slackware don't sell "enterprise" products. And many such projects are non-profit or otherwise. Unless Debian plans to establish itself as a commercial player, they don't need to defend their trademark. In fact, the commercial entity behind Debian is not named Debian, but Progeny. Ian Murdock was smart in this regard. Red Hat was not.

Before Red Hat changed their trademark rules and introduced Fedora(TM), Sun could _legally_ distribute anything it wanted and call it "Red Hat(R) Enterprise Linux." Why? Because Sun had grounds to state that Red Hat had failed to enforce their trademark. Especially given the fact that Sun now owned Cobalt, and could show that history directly under their own ownership.

That's the reality of US Trademark Law. And because German Trademark Law is even worse (Remember the KIllustrator issues? They weren't even brought to court by Adobe either -- but companies are allowed to sue on behalf of another company without being so empowered), SuSE used to do the same.

However, it's becoming clear that Novell may be turning SuSE into a more "Fedora-like" trademark and has publicly made comments on possibly turning it into a non-product project too. The first 100% freely redistributable version of SuSE Linux was 9.2 -- available in full ISO format, and not just FTP without many things.

The reality is that Red Hat needed 2 trademarks: One to defend, one to still allow free redistribution, hence Fedora Core. Most of the endeavors in the greater Fedora Project were already set 1-2 years before the name change.

With the SuSE purchase, Novell now has 2 as well. The Novell Linux 10 and SuSE Linux 10.x releases will be interesting to watch. In fact, it's funny to see Red Hat and SuSE flip-flop back and forth, following each other's lead (e.g., SLES first, then RHEL, 18-month RHPW/RHD replaced 6-month RHL Prof. on the retail shelf, now 18-month NLD is replacing 6-month SL Prof., etc...).

If Toyota and Honda both got an engine for a car from the same place ... Honda could certainly say: Uses the same engine as the Toyota XXXX ... even if Toyota provided them with the engine.

However, Honda or Toyota could _not_ brand the car as the original company without a license. Furthermore, they cannot market the engine as that company, not without a license to do so. Lastly, Honda and Toyota would likely have already had to license the engine in the first place, and such rights to use of the trademark probably would have been included.

Red Hat is the first and _only_ (and the last ;-) majority Linux distributor to allow anyone to use their trademarks without a license, and they have an entire history of profilerated forking without enforcement they now much fight retro- actively. That's the reality of the US trademark system and the burden they created for themselves. No one else will ever do the same.

What Red Hat reguarly ran up against -- especially with Cobalt and Sun -- is that people assumed they were distributing Red Hat's product, unmodified. They were not and actually distributing a radically different version that was heavily modified. I even had this discussion with a guy who hates RPM and Red Hat, and once he finally realized that his _entire_ viewpoint was based on Cobalts, he _finally_ saw the whole reason for the trademark issues Red Hat now has.

It was quite an epiphany. ;->

-- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org